Sunday, January 20, 2008

Obama not pandering

Barak Obama spoke today at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as a pastor. In the speech he talked about institutionalized racism, the sensationalizing of race "by the media" and the creeping of race as an issue into the presidential campaign. But the part of the speech that will probably be most commented on was this section where he called on the black community to do more to counter homophobia, anti-semitism and xenophobia:

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

link

Obviously in this speech Barak Obama is not just telling people what they want to hear, as candidates running for office so often do. You won't hear this degree of candor and straight talk from the other candidates, even the one lauded by the media as being a straight-talker.

1 comment:

keepin'real said...

Obama's not pandering bro., but the kind of fairy tales being told about the man tells me there are those who can't seem to stop pandering to White Americas,(and their trained porch monkeys), fears. The MAIN reason people should take a second look at the man himself, is that there was NO baggage, race or otherwise, brought to the table by the candidate himself - and truly viable in the sense that since he really has no axe to grind for past transgressions in government, and has got the common sense to reach across the aisle, in attempts to garner support for an agenda that is applicable to all sides. He's resonating because a CHANGE is what most Americans are screaming for, and a face that looks more common man, than Uncle Sam - might be just the ticket to extricate our global image from the mud - extricate our warriors from a clusterf**k created by those who had no one close in harms way - and no real worries on the final toll it would take on OUR country! But you can expect for the verbage/garbage to get worse because the "old boy" network won't reliquish reins easily.